Mass Effect 2...Little Late.

[Reishadowen]

The basic thing I'm bringing to discussion is of the human Mass Effect squad members in both games. What is everyone's opinion of them? Do you like them? Hate them? I'm not bringing the aliens into perspective because I feel they're talked about enough, no matter who you are you like the aliens a tad bit.

Well, Kaiden I felt was kinda bland. No matter how I played, he always seemed really just...invisible and kinda blank. Ashley seemed a little...for lack of a better word, bitchy at times, but also alot more fun. "We travel a million miles and a million years from home, and we find a girl on a stage shaking her ass. I can't decide if that's funny or sad." Ash definitely had a better personality to her, though I can't decide if that's because I was comparing her to a rather dull counterpart.

In ME2 on the other hand, Jacob still seems KINDA dull, but this time only in comparison to the rest of the crew. Jacob is a lot more interesting because he actually has a past instead of "Uh...I'm a biotic. Yeah....that's all I can think of." It actually goes into conversations where though Jacob doesn't totally agree with Cerberus, he does what he always thinks is right.

Now Miranda on the hand...Ugh. Why, why does Bioware have this fetish of shoving the camera right up Miranda's ass? The first time I went to talk to Miranda on the ship I had to fling myself off the couch and dive for cover because I thought her ass was coming through the TV screen right at me. Thank god I didn't have 3D activated at the time...

Overall, her personality was ok. Not great, not bad. She was very demanding and bitchy, but she had good reasons and backstory to explain it. Still couldn't bring myself to romance her though, her two front teeth were so large they made her look like a squirrel. The whole time talking to her I just wanted to throw her an acorn and see what would happen.

 

[orangeban]

Ug, Miranda always pissed me off, perfect human my ass. I didn't trust her, didn't like her and didn't think she deserved her place as XO.

Jacob was alright, a bit dopey sure, but in a gentle kind of way. He seemed nice enough.

 

[Frankster]

Well this should be quick....

Kaiden had little impact on me, to me he was the face of the faceless crewmen of the normandy, but he never annoyed me so guess im ok with him and i did grow to like him as my sidekick.
Ashley, well she was the female kaiden for me with stronger opinions which i didnt really agree with so fell behind kaiden in the overall rankings but i was ok with her overall.
Honestly i wasnt thrilled in letting either of them die so shows i cared about them a little.

Jacob somehow made even less of an impact on me then kaiden did, a feat worthy of respect. I dont wish him ill nor good, just pure indifference.

Now miranda on the other hand I really can't stand, she's got most things i hate in a person, overconfidence and arrogance, self importance and mary suesque qualities, its a good thing she doesnt do too many smartass quips or would have been the complete package.

What elevates her above being a mere annoying character though, is that she benefits from a certain preference or aura of invincibility compared to other characters. She is the hardest to kill in the final mission regardless of loyalty and is immune to the nastier deaths other characters can have, so what miranda, you too good to die horrible deaths like the rest of us?

 

[Patrick Buck]

Tail and Garrus. The only two people I really take on trips. I do like the other characters, but I just love those two so much, it hardly matters.

 

[Ziame]

I didn't exactly _hate_ them (Kaidan, Ashley, Jacob or Miranda). Just, in my opinion, they felt so bland compared to Wrex, Garrus, Tali and all. I haven't really developed any interest in any of those four characters. Kaidan whined all the time, Ashley bored me, Jacob was "too nice for a guy who knows a thousand ways to kill you" and Miranda was a *****. But that was all acceptable, they just weren't interesting in their flaws.

And I hoped that after ME2 they would finally understand that Garrus and Tali should be the two main sidekicks, but oh well.


(oh, another thing is that the "perfect girl" didn't really get me excited. Neither digital nor real version. She's pretty, but not OMFG pretty.)


Actually, same deal with Bastilla/Onasi. HK-47 all the way.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Or creepiness as it feels like Shepard is manipulating someone for sex.

That, too. It never ceases to amaze me how ME2 romances have such a large fanbase. Seriously, BSN? [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/325/index]

 

[Kahunaburger]

(re: Jack)

- Oh, but don't think you can 'fix' her. That smacks of white knight presumption. The notion of her having to be 'corrected' by some external source most of all.

Wasn't that the whole premise of her paragon romance subplot, though? Well, that and the whole "healing dick" cliche.

 

[Zyxx]

What I hated most about Miranda was her blind devotion to Cerberus. I wound up losing her loyalty because I DID feel that what Cerberus did to Jack was wrong, and her argument that it "wasn't really Cerberus" didn't hold water to me. If the Illusive Man didn't know about that, it's because he didn't WANT to know.
And then at the end she's all "You did the right thing by blowing up the Collector base." Okaaay... the fact that you're suddenly not biting my head off about disobeying the Man kinda makes me uneasy.
Also, her front teeth kinda put me off. They're really wide, or something? I kept noticing it.

Jack's sociopathic violence actually sort of endeared her to me. She reminds me a little bit of Revy from Black Lagoon. I would really have liked to see more of her just unleashing biotic hell on everything in her way (figuring out how to work that into gameplay would be sweeeeet - not just warps and singularities, but full-on chairs flying everywhere skull-crushing mass effect field insanity.)

I sort of liked Jacob as a person. Maybe not the most interesting CHARACTER, but a decent guy I don't mind chatting with now and again.

I got bored with Zaeed really fast, mostly from lack of real conversations to have with the guy during off-time.

I didn't really care for Kaidan or Ashley, though I'll admit I mostly ignored them in favor of the nonhumans. It's just how I'm wired: I'm around humans all the time anyway, and my interactions with most of them have been pretty unsatisfying. I'd rather give Turians and Krogans and Quarians (oh my) a chance.
In my defense, not being human isn't enough to make a character worthwhile to me: I found Liara to be VERY dull.

I do kinda have to give Bioware props for giving Ashley some unpopular (in the setting, at least) views regarding alien relations and religion. Not enough to make me really care about her, but it IS something to make her stand out.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

(re: Jack)

- Oh, but don't think you can 'fix' her. That smacks of white knight presumption. The notion of her having to be 'corrected' by some external source most of all.

Wasn't that the whole premise of her paragon romance subplot, though? Well, that and the whole "healing dick" cliche.

Yeah. I romanced Jack, but it felt very condescending as a Paragon.

 

[NubiJuan]

Me and Jacob got off the right foot from the beginning since he was a nice contrast, being an everyguy, to Miranda's overpowering personality. I didn't use him after the first couple of sequences but I still liked him because he always came off as being dependable. As for Miranda, I was too distracted by her to not like her...

But due to the extended yellow phase I went through, Kasumi was my favorite and I really enjoyed her story. Not having played the first ME, Zaeed and his blatant bad ass-ness were second favorites.

I know it's an amazing galaxy filled with cool alien creatures, but that only makes me want to cling on to other humans.

 

[Gmans uncle]

MIRANDA. IS. A. *****.
I let her die BOTH times I played through ME2, I'm sorry but Jack was in the right in that argument.
I went for Garrus in my first play-through, and Liara on my second, played as femshep both times. I like Garrus 'cause he seemed like the only character I'd actually want to spend thirty collective seconds with in real life. Thane is probably who I'll go for on my next play-through, I don't really fancy Samerta or Morinth, and I refuse to play as maleshep.

 

[Erttheking]

I pretty much like all of the companions for both games...minus Zaeed. DUDE THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THAT REFINERY!

 

[LetalisK]

I hate Miranda, I hate her so much. She's too overly confident for me, nothing about her strikes me as appealing. Jacob, where as I wouldn't say he's a guy every girl should date, he's a nice guy. He feels a lot like Garrus to me; someone that wants to do good but needs the right direction.

This isn't exactly a bad thing. If you hate Miranda, or any character for that matter, because you think they did a poor job of crafting her character, then that's a problem. But if you hate her because you don't like who the character is, then mission accomplished. If the developer can inspire emotion in a player through the other character's personalities and stories then it's done its job. Almost always we link good emotions with companions and bad emotions with enemies, but in a game where all the characters are supposed to have different personalities, dispositions, and goals, isn't inspiring hate equally valid?

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Something Amyss]

Jack on the other hand, what is the deal with her outfit?

She's a textbook psych case, I've never understood why people don't understand her behaviour. If anything, she's a little too "by the numbers" for me.

 

[Something Amyss]

This isn't exactly a bad thing. If you hate Miranda, or any character for that matter, because you think they did a poor job of crafting her character, then that's a problem. But if you hate her because you don't like who the character is, then mission accomplished. If the developer can inspire emotion in a player through the other character's personalities and stories then it's done its job. Almost always we link good emotions with companions and bad emotions with enemies, but in a game where all the characters are supposed to have different personalities, dispositions, and goals, isn't inspiring hate equally valid?

Just my 2 cents.

Unless, of course, the character is supposed to be likable or sympathetic.

 

[MadarseLizard]

Ashley was at least fun to talk to and felt like a real character; Kaiden was boring and I never used him outside of the first mission, letting him die instead of Ashley without a second thought; Miranda looked horrible and was just annoying; I found Jack to be whiny and dull, but used her a lot in missions and Jacob was dull to start with but got mildly more human as the game progressed. All of the human characters were overshadowed by the much more interesting and unique alien characters

 

[iRevanchist]

Jack has to be my favorite character from ME2. Wait, no, Mordin is. Joker is third.
Going through the game as a femshep, you see the jacob is just very dull. i feel like he was written up on request after a meeting which asked the team to make 'a normal character'.

.

quote="Kevin Delgado" post="9.335955.13564386"] Kaiden always struck me as more interesting due to the problems of "Brain camp" that he had to endue to me an L2. Not to mention his voice actor always reminds me of Carth Onasi from KOTOR.

I thought he WAS Carth from KOTOR...after playing KOTOR for the first time Kaiden now strikes me as "Carth 2.0"[/quote]

lol, i do think that bioware just likes hiring sbarge for its space rpgs. but thane has the SAME EXACT backstory as Carth's.
dead wife because he was out working. check.
son who hates him for being absent. check.
son who needs the protagonist, and carth/thane, to come on a loyalty mission to turn him back from the dark/renegade-criminal side. check.

 

[LetalisK]

This isn't exactly a bad thing. If you hate Miranda, or any character for that matter, because you think they did a poor job of crafting her character, then that's a problem. But if you hate her because you don't like who the character is, then mission accomplished. If the developer can inspire emotion in a player through the other character's personalities and stories then it's done its job. Almost always we link good emotions with companions and bad emotions with enemies, but in a game where all the characters are supposed to have different personalities, dispositions, and goals, isn't inspiring hate equally valid?

Just my 2 cents.

Unless, of course, the character is supposed to be likable or sympathetic.

Then that would fall under the former, wouldn't it? Assuming that was the intent, trying to create a universally likable and sympathetic character in a game like Mass Effect would run counter to its foundation.

 

[longboardfan]

Biggest issue with Miranda was wishing I could turn the setting from "*****" to "normal" and to take the stick/oar/crane out of her ass long enough to have a real conversation with her character. Alas, she's stuck on ***** and the crane has turned into a fishing trawler.

Jack: don't stick it in the crazy

Kaiden/Jacob: Hey Shephard, how do you like my impression of a plank of wood?

Ashley: xenophobe with a hard-on for guns and bad poetry = don't stick it in the crazy

Kelly Chambers: well at least she isn't crazy, or bitchy, or stupid, or walks into missiles, or blocks line of sight to enemies while catching bullets with her face, etc. However, I might have to flag her for "too stupid to live" because she's the first to die if you don't immediately go through the jump point to save the crew